Xavier Omar Rodriguez, a 21-year-old Male, was born in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, on January 25, 1990, to his parents, Marisel Serrano and Francisco Rodriguez. The oldest of six children, he grew up alongside his siblings, Jecenia Cosme, Jonathan Salvat, and Kimberly, Luis, and Giovannie DeJesus. His life, however, took a turn that led him inside the walls of the Florida State Prison in Raiford, a maximum-security institution in Union County.
It was there, in the supposed custody and protection of the state, that his life was brutally cut short on May 17, 2011.
On that Tuesday evening, Rodriguez was the target of a meticulously planned and vicious attack by two fellow inmates, William Edward Wells III and Wayne C. Doty. The motive was reportedly a dispute over stolen cigarettes and insults Rodriguez had allegedly directed at Doty. Doty had another inmate fashion a homemade knife, and he and Wells, who both worked as runners on their wing, carefully observed the guards' routines to find the perfect time to strike. They lured Rodriguez to an interview room with a bet, tricking him into letting them bind his hands.
Once Rodriguez was restrained, Doty clamped him in a chokehold from behind until he lost consciousness. As Rodriguez lay helpless on the floor, Doty began stabbing him with the crude knife while Wells stood guard. The attackers later admitted they had hoped to cut out his heart to ensure he was dead, but the blade was too dull. To finish the act, they tied a ligature made from a bedsheet around his neck. After the murder, the two men took showers, smoked a cigarette, and then calmly notified a corrections officer, confessing to what they had done. An investigation determined Rodriguez's cause of death was strangulation and multiple stab wounds.
Xavier’s murder was not his killers’ first. Wayne C. Doty was already serving a life sentence for the 1996 murder of a former boss. William Edward Wells III was a convicted serial killer, dubbed "The Monster of Mayport." In 2003, Wells had murdered five people over nine days, including his wife, her father, and her brother, for which he was serving five consecutive life sentences. Already convicted of an attempted murder of another inmate in 2008, Wells would later boast in a letter to a news station about killing Rodriguez. "Myself and an accomplice bound, strangled and killed yet another inmate," he wrote. "So I guess my quest for the lethal injection continues."
In August 2011, a grand jury indicted both Wells and Doty for the first-degree murder of Xavier Rodriguez. Doty, representing himself, pleaded guilty. Following a penalty phase, he was sentenced to death in 2013. His sentence was later vacated due to a change in Florida's sentencing laws but was reinstated in 2018 after a new hearing where a jury unanimously recommended death. Doty has since sought to waive his appeals and has requested to be executed by the electric chair.
William Wells was tried separately. In 2017, a Bradford County jury found him guilty of first-degree murder for his role in Xavier's death. The jury recommended a life sentence, and the judge sentenced him to his seventh life term without the possibility of parole. Wells’s violence did not end there. In 2019, he and another serial killer murdered a third inmate, William Chapman. For that crime, Wells was finally sentenced to death and is currently on death row awaiting execution. Following his death, Xavier Rodriguez was remembered by his family, who held services in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where he was laid to rest.
